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The first of 9 sites we visited on our Welsh adventure.
Cwm Coke's origins lie with the Great Western Railway and it's insatiable hunger for coal. The GWR sunk pits at the Cwm site in 1909 as well as in other areas of the Rhondda, but Cwm didn't become known for it's coke until 1958 when the coking ovens and associated plant for producing coke and refining the by-products of the coking process were installed. During this time the existing colliery site saw a £9 million investment, by the 1970's the two pits 'Margaret' and 'Mildred' and the coking plant were the workplace of 1,500 men this combined effort produced 515,000 tons of coke per annum. The colliery continued production of coal right up until privatisation of the National Coal Board in 1986.
The coking plant remained in use until 2002 producing the low sulphur coke that the foundries of Port Talbot required.
Explore
This was the first site on a long, long list of potential explores across Wales that we planned to do over the weekend. Due to unforeseen automotive issues we ended up with 4 of us (Myself, BigDirk, Pringle and Piffblazer) plus camping gear in my car which made for a cosy weekend! Due to having to wait for Piffblazer to finish work and the subsequent traffic nightmares associated with Friday rush hour, we arrived later than expected and had to cross a couple of sites off (you know how these schedules slip!). but finally we were here and still had a little light left! Here are a couple of pictures from the climb on up to the pulveriser I took that night:
Next, we headed off to The Rest Hotel in Porthcawl, where we planned to stay the night, however it turns out it has been put back into use, so we found a nearby spot to camp before the inevitable re-visit to CWM in the morning.
Here are the pictures from the morning.
15 year old newspaper.
Foolishly, in my early morning stupor I absent mindedly said Good Morning to the chap in the last image here, which was met with “You know you shouldn’t be there?” “Look out for the Security Dogs” and “I’ll tell them you’re in there when I see them”. It was time to go anyway as we were well behind schedule, so we made our escape and moved onto the next site, Tweed Mills
Cwm Coke's origins lie with the Great Western Railway and it's insatiable hunger for coal. The GWR sunk pits at the Cwm site in 1909 as well as in other areas of the Rhondda, but Cwm didn't become known for it's coke until 1958 when the coking ovens and associated plant for producing coke and refining the by-products of the coking process were installed. During this time the existing colliery site saw a £9 million investment, by the 1970's the two pits 'Margaret' and 'Mildred' and the coking plant were the workplace of 1,500 men this combined effort produced 515,000 tons of coke per annum. The colliery continued production of coal right up until privatisation of the National Coal Board in 1986.
The coking plant remained in use until 2002 producing the low sulphur coke that the foundries of Port Talbot required.
Explore
This was the first site on a long, long list of potential explores across Wales that we planned to do over the weekend. Due to unforeseen automotive issues we ended up with 4 of us (Myself, BigDirk, Pringle and Piffblazer) plus camping gear in my car which made for a cosy weekend! Due to having to wait for Piffblazer to finish work and the subsequent traffic nightmares associated with Friday rush hour, we arrived later than expected and had to cross a couple of sites off (you know how these schedules slip!). but finally we were here and still had a little light left! Here are a couple of pictures from the climb on up to the pulveriser I took that night:
Next, we headed off to The Rest Hotel in Porthcawl, where we planned to stay the night, however it turns out it has been put back into use, so we found a nearby spot to camp before the inevitable re-visit to CWM in the morning.
Here are the pictures from the morning.
15 year old newspaper.
Foolishly, in my early morning stupor I absent mindedly said Good Morning to the chap in the last image here, which was met with “You know you shouldn’t be there?” “Look out for the Security Dogs” and “I’ll tell them you’re in there when I see them”. It was time to go anyway as we were well behind schedule, so we made our escape and moved onto the next site, Tweed Mills
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Tis the season for derp camp outs!
